


things that change yet stay the same

by kirinokisu



Category: Kuroko no Basuke | Kuroko's Basketball
Genre: Alternate Universe - Zombies, M/M, Mild Gore, Minor Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-01
Updated: 2015-01-01
Packaged: 2018-03-04 20:13:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,393
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3087578
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kirinokisu/pseuds/kirinokisu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Unpremeditated run-ins with zombies, it seems, can really spice things up. Who would have thought. Certainly not Aomine Daiki.</p>
            </blockquote>





	things that change yet stay the same

**Author's Note:**

  * For [jarofclay](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jarofclay/gifts).



> For jar, whose traitorous akakuro soul doesn't deserve aokuro at the moment, but a Lannister always pays their debts and all that.
> 
> Although not heavily, zombies are still featured. Therefore mild gore and violence.  
> What little I know about zombies pretty much comes from The Last of Us. It shows.  
> (What is world building even. What is _plot_.)
> 
> With many thanks to puwacchi and her inhuman knowledge on all things bloody and disgusting. As well as kite and her ability to make sense despite the confusion.
> 
> (Happy New Year, jar, you know I love you lots. I hope I did not meet any of your expectations.)

\- - -

The job was simple: five undead in the old industrial district. The plan was even simpler: lure the bastards out one by one, kill quick and clean, burn the bodies.

Finally leave this forsaken city behind and head back to the labs in Kyoto, Daiki thought as he crawled soundlessly along one of the horizontal beams supporting the roof of the warehouse. Not that he was particularly eager to listen to Imayoshi's lectures about the 'clean' part of the job or witness the creepy smile that accompanied it. But he did miss his bed. And a decent shower. Not to forget the look on Kagami's face when he would learn of Daiki's latest achievement in clearing yet another city of zombies; a nice bonus after all the shit Daiki had to put up with, warehouses being a major improvement from the sewers last week.

The wood was old but solid under Daiki's weight. The warehouse had probably been one of those fancier ones, with big automatic doors and complex alarm systems—none of which remained anymore, of course. High and spacious, it had two floors: one for cargo and another overlooking it all around the perimeter, builders' ladders still connected to its half-walls at even intervals. Dead in the centre of what used to be a major factory area back when Daiki had been a kid and zombies still a stuff of nightmares, the construction had never been fully finished, either because the owners had run out of funds or because the infection had come too soon. Judging by the materials and tools scattered on the floor amidst massive metal crates, Daiki would've bet on the latter.

Tetsu would've known for sure, having leafed through the city map and multiple files given by Satsuki before they came to this place a couple of weeks ago. Tetsu was always meticulous like that.

Daiki's right hand bumped into a large thick beam crossing over the one he was posed on. He cursed, winced. Listened.

It felt uncomfortably strange, creeping in the dark without a certain assurance that Tetsu was somewhere there, lurking, ready to provide all the information Daiki needed for a successful kill. Directions, locations, positions, numbers.

Felt even stranger not to know where Tetsu was. _If Tetsu was at all_ , his unhelpful mind supplied.

Ever since they had been paired by the bureau—Daiki as the hunter and Tetsu as his accompanying scientist—they had become a quite a pair, chasing the undead together, unlike so many others in the department. Tetsu had made it perfectly clear he was not one to sit in a corner quietly, doing whatever it was the scientists actually did. Other than writing shitty reports on Daiki’s ‘irresponsible, irrational behaviour that put everyone in his surroundings in danger’. Tetsu had followed Daiki on their first mission together—back then Daiki had yet to discover Tetsu’s wicked and undoubtedly supernatural abilities of creeping up on people—knocked out a bunch of zombies chasing after Daiki with a well enough aimed smoke bomb, and gave Daiki the look. Daiki grinned, fed the zombies the rest of the bullets he had, set the bodies on fire and his partnership with Tetsu had began.

Seven months later, Daiki swung over the beam, straight into a thick curtain of cobweb, alone. He stoically did not question what sticky substance was squelching under his left palm. Ignored the dust clogging his nostrils. And two more identical roof-supporting beams later, he was crouching approximately halfway to the other side, vast expanse of the warehouse dark and silent below him. Too silent.

He closed his eyes and listened harder.

Nothing.

Which couldn’t be. They had taken the first three zombies— _infected_ , Tetsu’s voice reprimanded in his head—without a hitch, luring them with just enough sound and motion to alert the bastards, one by one, right in Daiki’s awaiting arms. Fully fledged zombies couldn’t see, but they could _hear._ Way better than anyone dead and hideous was allowed to, if you asked Daiki. And they could smell. Which was pretty ironic, zombie stench considered.

Still, with enough skill, you could navigate around those little problems. And Daiki had more than enough skill.

That’s why it didn't make sense that one moment he had been about to silence another fucker with a perfectly aimed backstab, and the next that same fucker had turned around with a bone-chilling zombie screech that alerted its ugly buddy nearby.

Daiki had stumbled, but avoided having scratched half of his face off out of sheer reflexes, honed to perfection not in the gym but out in the field. His kick met the bastard's solar plexus just a moment before a gun went off behind him. An audible crunch of a broken bone, and Daiki rolled away to a crouch, knife in hand. The zombie wailed in pure anger and terror as it clutched its shoulder, dark liquid oozing from exposed blotch of decomposing flesh. One of the bullets got stuck in a protruding bared collarbone. The hideous creature trembled violently as it stood there, its left leg bent unnaturally, painfully backwards.

Behind a row of broken rusty cars, Tetsu was shouting something as he reloaded his gun. Adrenaline pumping in his blood, Daiki couldn't make out the words but Tetsu was pointing somewhere. “Aomine-kun, the other one!” Daiki looked to his left, assessed the area, and there it was, running at the speed of a truck. Running _away._

Not so fast, you ugly shitface, Daiki muttered. With one last quick look at Tetsu, he had given chase.

Past abandoned factories and ruined storage buildings, shouting silent curses inside his head but preserving his much limited bullets, until he ended up here, perched on this bloody beam for all the zombies to see. And nobody bothered to.

Taking off his gun, Daiki shot up into the night air, aimless. The roof was already partially destroyed, big gaps in it letting just enough moonlight to make the surrounding navigable without a flashlight. The bullet caught a piece of broken wood, snapping a chunk off it. It fell, and its landing echoed ominously by a growl—below, but not too far.

Daiki grinned and pushed forward.

Over one last wooden beam, and he was finally standing on solid concrete of the second floor. He crouched and made a move towards the ladder propped against the opening in the half-wall. One of the floorboards creaked under the pressure and Daiki stilled, barely breathing in the stagnant stillness of the warehouse. Close, too close now.

He could smell it, the awful stench of decay and rotting organs he was used to but still hated all the same. _Fucking_ _zombies_.

Back pressed flat against the low wall and hidden well in the shadows, Daiki peered down. Overturned metal crates all over the place, piles of logs and planks and chipped wood. Plastic wrap white from dust and cobwebs; he would have to avoid stepping on those. And to the left, just a few steps away from a big gaping hole in the wall, amidst old wooden boxes with unreadable faded labels, was the zombie. Outlined by the moonlight pouring from the makeshift window, it was just sitting there, crouched above a dead body, letting out low hungry growls.

And it wasn't alone.

It was too dark and too far to see in detail, but it looked like while one of them was about to gorge itself on the lump laying on the floor, completely oblivious, the other one was poised for an attack, not all that eager to share. A nasty feeling settled in Daiki's gut. What next, zombies feasting on zombies? Imagine the smell they would have _then._

Daiki palmed his Glock, checked the ammo—just enough to take the two down, with a kick or two for additional reassurance.

Zombies weren't exactly bright, their hunger so primitive it overruled any other instinct, even self-preservation. So Daiki grabbed for the rusty metal of the ladder and made his way down. They would be too focused to notice anything.

His boots didn't make a sound when they touched the ground. Daiki would've preferred just jumping down and cutting the chase, but he was on their territory now, close enough to hear muffled wails as mangled hands ripped the dead body to shreds, stuffed flesh into bloody mouth. With each step Daiki took, the stink grew stronger, the wails louder. He didn't stop.

Navigating around the crates, Daiki approached the first zombie slowly, soundlessly. The stinky creature was still locked onto the other one, so Daiki unsheathed his knife and raised it to strike. It would be swift and painless, perhaps not what the bastard deserved, but it would be silent.

He swung —

A flash of familiar blue and huge startled eyes.

— and stunned with realisation, he let the momentum carry him forward, until he smashed right into the other _person._

They tumbled on the dirty floor, raising dust that clogged the vision, and something sharp jammed into Daiki's ribs, and he felt something wet and slimy on his cheek, and he didn't care. Pushing his weight up from the body under him, he looked down at the face revealed from beneath the fallen hood.

“Tetsu?!”

Behind them, the other zombie snarled as it rose up on its grotesque broken limbs.

“Well shit.”

\- - -

The house was nice and cozy, brown wooden kitchen blending into a spacious living room with big windows covering one wall in its entirety. Light wallpaper with some intricate pattern. Big couch and plush armchairs. Quaint. Homey. Or well, it probably had been, back in the day. Now the wood was chipped and wallpaper had peeled off in patches, furniture intact but fabric torn. And the windows were covered with thick cardboard, blocking not just sunlight out of the place.

It wasn't theirs of course.

Daiki plopped on the armchair that looked relatively more stable than the other and pretended not to notice the big green stain on the armrest. He was not going to ponder its dubious origins either. “So,” he said eloquently.

Tetsu was still visibly panting as he made a beeline for the rusty sink in the kitchen, shallow breaths audible in the otherwise silent surroundings. He wasn't exactly the finest example of athletic prowess and they had run quite a distance.

After disposing of the train wreck that was a zombie interrupted mid-feeding, Daiki had every intention of voicing his many very vocal and very much justified complaints about the situation and question the stink that was coming off _Tetsu_ of all things, but Tetsu had looked at him really seriously, face darkened with a contemplating frown. “We have to go,” he had said. Daiki could only watch, befuddled, as Tetsu released the smoke bombs. They erupted in a cloud of thick, foul smelling mist that filled the entire warehouse in a matter of seconds. Unable to see, Daiki could hear the zombie noises clearly now—many, so many, _and_ _where the hell did the_ _y_ _come from_. Then, they had ran.

“There were more,” Tetsu said finally, leaning on the counter.

Daiki raised an eyebrow. “Yeah? Kinda noticed that when the zombie I chased turned out to be a lame party crasher. _Your_ party,” he said accusingly. Definitely not sulking, he dug into the pocket of his jeans and fished out a protein bar.

“And that didn't strike you as odd?”

Incredulous, Daiki looked up from his very important task of tearing the damn wrapper open. “Are you being serious right now? That shit _smells_ , Tetsu.”

“You were chasing a zombie.” Daiki paused again, not following. He hated not following. “It was running away from _you._ Contrary to what you would like to believe, you are not yet scary enough for the infected to just scatter in fear.”

Somehow, Tetsu did not make that “yet” sound like a compliment to Daiki's extraordinary skill.

“Huh, that _was_ pretty odd,” Daiki reflected as he bit into the bar. Mouth full, he continued, “but hey, maybe they were afraid of you. Those new nail bombs of yours? Total killer.” As a brilliant afterthought, he added, “we should dress you up as a mad scientist, for further affect.”

When Daiki stopped munching and the snack was gone, he realised that the silence had stretched for too long. He looked up.

“Aomine-kun.” Tetsu said without the slightest hint of humour, “I think they're evolving further.”

In the years that the infection had been studied, there were two known stages: the infected and the fully transformed. Originally, the infected ones were the victims of a laboratory outbreak in Tokyo; an explosion that wiped out a good chunk of the city. Those unlucky enough to survive the initial blast had ended up trapped in the ruins for hours, breathing in the thick polluted air. When the rescue squad had finally arrived, they had found not people but monsters. Less than a week later, Tokyo was gone.

But the plague was not. As it turned out, deep enough into transformation, the freaky virus could be transferred through saliva. The time it took to reach that contagious state varied and scientists were yet to reach consensus on what individual and environmental factors exactly affected the speed of the transformation, but one thing they all agreed on: the process was not reversible. There was no cure. And one bite of a fully transformed was all it took.

How such virus even came to existence was never officially addressed—not when any opposition, no matter how minor, was stopped immediately, often with force. But people talked, and the signs were there: as the infection spread through the blood cells, your physical abilities gradually increased while your mind deteriorated. Skin thick as leather armour, heightened sense of smell and complete loss of sight as well as cognition were the final stage.

The idea of evolution was impossible.

Only this was Tetsu and Daiki trusted him with his life.

“The warehouse,” Daiki began.

Tetsu nodded. “It's like they were gathering forces. And as much as it would be sensible to wait for the back up, we need to go back there as soon as possible.”

Imayoshi was going to slaughter them. Not even bothering to hide his glee, Daiki leaned further back in his chair, mindful of a rusty spring poking him in the shoulder. “How did you even find that place?”

“After dispatching of the infected in the rental place, I planned on running after you but you were already too far,” Tetsu explained, his hands fumbling with the zipper of his hoodie. “It wasn't hard tracking you. You were being louder than an elephant.” Daiki wanted to protest but, “When I had finally caught up, you were already swinging on the roof, without a care in the world that there were more that just one infected waiting for you.”

“So you went inside,” Daiki said sagely.

Tetsu gave him a look. “I was going to observe them for a while, since we can't take them alive. See what exactly was going on. _Unnoticed,”_ Tetsu stressed the word. Then he took off his dirty hoodie and dumped it in the sink.

Daiki eyed it with obvious distaste and a hefty dose of doubt. “Is that how you decided to drench yourself in zombie blood?”

Tetsu shrugged nonchalantly and took off his t-shirt too, threw it into the same pile. “It covers the human scent quite well. You should try it.”

I don't need it, Daiki wanted to say. The pale expanse of Tetsu's chest was contracting calmly, rhythmically, his breath finally back to normal. Unlike Daiki, he didn't have any scars, not even white faded ones from childhood. A streak of dark, alien blood run across his abdomen, its smeared tail fading into the waistband of his jeans.

Are you going to take off your pants too, Daiki wanted to ask.

“Aomine-kun?”

“Yeah?” Daiki rasped.

Tetsu's frown was indicated only by the slight wrinkles between his eyebrows. “I asked if something was wrong.”

Daiki took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. Didn't do wonders. “Nah, nothing.” Hastily, he stood up, heedless of both the loose spring and the nasty stain. “I'm, uh, gonna go look around the house. Check if there's anything useful.”

He didn't linger long enough to see if Tetsu had cocked his head in confusion in that purely Tetsu-way of his.

\- - -

The problem with technology, Daiki decided, was that it amplified the annoyance of Satsuki's nagging.

“Dai-chan,” she ranted through the static of the cell phone. “You were supposed to be back _yesterday_. Are you okay? What did you do? Is Tetsu-kun okay?”

“Shuddup, Satsuki,” he grumbled. “God, you're so loud. There were complications, okay?”

Still are, he thought, but sitting safe in the confinements of the headquarters in Kyoto, way too close to Imayoshi, Satsuki did not need to know that. It's not like telling her anything would free him from the horrible duty of filing a very detailed—he could just picture Imayoshi's sigh of eternal suffering—report on all what had transpired.

Daiki wondered briefly if Tetsu could be persuaded into helping him again, but dismissed the idea quickly because, somehow, _everyone_ always knew it wasn't Daiki's own creative work— _just wha_ t _the hell did Tetsu put on that paper, for real_.  And because Imayoshi was evil, Daiki seriously doubted that this time one week of paperwork hell would be considered sufficient enough punishment.

“What kind of complications?” Satsuki inquired carefully, as if not sure if she should be making arrangement for immediate backup or banging her head against the neat stack of papers that never diminished in size.

“Sheesh, the usual kind?” Daiki resisted the urge to kick an old soda can, forgotten on the cement floor of the garage. They had checked the house and its surroundings before making camp—he was with _Tetsu_ , after all—but one could never be sure what noises could attract in these parts of the country. “You know, the ones that bite. And smell.”

“You did something ridiculous again, didn't you?” Satsuki said, exasperated. When it became evident that Daiki was not going to elaborate, on anything, she added, much lower, “Dai-chan? Be careful, please. Tetsu-kun...” Her tinny voice trailed off, uncharacteristically uncertain.

“Relax, Satsuki. Tetsu's a tough guy, he can take care of himself.” Leaning on the white truck that they were assigned for this mission, Daiki grinned at the memory. “You should see this thing he did with nails and some scraps of metal. Like a bomb, only way cooler? The bastards just go _boom_ , guts flying everywhere. Pretty disgusting.”

Satsuki fell silent on the other end of line. Eventually, she said, “It's not Tetsu-kun I'm worried about.”

Daiki rolled his eyes. With nothing else to say, he looked around. Some rusted tools, still assembled neatly on a work tables to the left. An array of screw-drivers pinned to a magnetic board hanging above it—they could use those, maybe. An old tire, from the looks of it busted.

“Dai-chan? Are you listening? Dai-chan!”

On a small counter to the left of the door that led back to the house, Daiki noticed a big stack of old papers and magazines. He picked up a wrinkled pamphlet from the very top of it. “Kinokuniya Annual Book Fair”, it said in faded violet. Daiki turned the sheet around, studied the map covering the entire page.

Huh, that was pretty close, wasn't it.

“Hey, Satsuki, Tetsu really likes books, right?”

\- - -

“Aomine-kun, I know you are not a fan of reading, but even you could not have missed the big road sign that pointed the way out of the city. It had pictures.”

“Relax, Tetsu, I know where we're going.” Despite not looking very convinced, Tetsu refrained from commenting further. Daiki patted himself on the back.

He wasn't entirely lying when he had said he knew where they were going. He did, sorta. The general direction of it. In his defence, the pamphlet in the garage had been old, as had the map on it, and some of the roads no longer functioned. Daiki would've loved to plunder through them anyway, but after last time that had ended in a mouthful of swamp vegetation and confused baby fish taking refuge in his boots, Tetsu was not as inclined.

Tetsu, who was looking out of the window with faint curiosity. His worried frown was temporarily replaced, Daiki noted, weirdly pleased.

Rested, eaten and fully armed, they had gone back to the warehouse first thing in the morning, when the sun was barely up. They had found it empty. So much so that Daiki almost had to ask if this was the right place, but unlike the zombies, the body from the day before had still been on the floor. Or what was left of it—not much, admittedly.

They had scouted the area in the 15km radius, but found nothing. Absolutely nothing. Not even a trail to follow, only the usual piles of bones and decomposing bits of flesh all over the district. With nothing to go on, they had reported the incident—so disturbing that even Aomine-kun was starting to think, Tetsu had mentioned drily—to Satsuki, got the order to head back to the headquarters and hadn't talked much since then.

The city scape morphed from metropolitan to more rural gradually, looming apartment complexes and broken neon signs changing into neat family houses and bloodied picket fences. Hoping for the best, Daiki veered the car to the right, then to the left. The street was bigger, the road wider here and Daiki didn't bother to hide his smug grin when the two-storey building of the Books Kinokuniya finally came to view. He pulled over near the entrance and looked at Tetsu.

“This,” Tetsu said slowly, “is a bookstore.”

“Pretty cool, right?” To conceal the excitement that was bubbling low in his stomach, Daiki attempted a nonchalant stretch. Well, he _was_ tired from all the driving. Even if it took 20 minutes tops. “You like books, don't you?”

Tetsu didn't answer right away. He just... kept looking at Daiki, not blinking or making any sound. Daiki was about to throw up from the tension when Tetsu finally blinked and said, “Aomine-kun, you really are impossible.”

Then, Daiki could only watch as Tetsu opened the door and hopped out of the car. Something inside Daiki had felt really, really warm at the strange, hoarse undertone of Tetsu's voice. He rubbed at his chest, briefly confused. _Huh._

\- - -

“Man, you really do like this stuff,” Daiki observed as Tetsu roamed through the cluttered space of the first floor.

The building itself was largely intact, excluding some minor damage to the outer brick layer and all of the windows broken, but its interior had seen better days. Rows after rows of overturned and collapsed shelves crowded the place, creating a low maze filled with splintered wood and torn pages. Here and there, some pieces of furniture laid partially taken apart. The banisters of the big, posh stairs leading to the second floor were also missing some essential parts—wood was not the most useful weapon against non-humans, but it was better than nothing at all. A giant chandelier hanging from the ceiling looked metal, but it also seemed to be too high to reach in an emergency. Then there were books, _so many books_.

Inside the cash register, Daiki found some lesser bills, a couple of coins. “Guess the business wasn't doing so well, huh.”

“On the contrary, judging by the selection of books,” Tetsu said, not even bothering to look up from the tiny tome he was holding gently in his hands. He blew off the dust from the cover and opened it gingerly. “I would guess that they were doing remarkably well.”

“But they don't even have any magazines here,” Daiki remarked sceptically, giving the place a sad look. “Or porn.”

“Maybe the infected took them all,” Tetsu said flatly.

Daiki shot him a bemused look, but it wasn't reciprocated. “Tetsu, they don't have any brains.” He paused to consider. “Unless we count those they eat. Do we count them?”

“My point exactly, Aomine-kun.”

In the peaceful silence that fell as Daiki searched for a comeback, the growl from behind the giant cherrywood doors sounded awfully clear.

“Aomine-kun,” Tetsu began dangerously low, finally taking his eyes off the book in his hands. He even put it down altogether. “Did you check the files on this location before you decided to go sight-seeing?” He crouched behind a shelf that had fallen on top of another, creating a much higher barrier than most in this place.

With one assessing look around, Daiki came to a tragic conclusion that the stairwell would be the only other thing to possibly obstruct him from the view of the entrance of the shop. “Ummm, no?” he said sheepishly as he flattened himself against the wall.

“Daiki.” Even in this fucked up situation, the ease with which his name rolled off Tetsu's lips made Daiki feel all sorts of funny. And somehow the exasperation made the funny even more intense.

“Well, the good thing is, now we can update those files?” Daiki grinned, taking his Glock from its holster and emptying the entire chamber into the zombie that came crashing through the front door. The creature wailed, the sound of it deafening, jerked to a stop, and fell abruptly to the floor. Dead.

Daiki had a sense of utter déjà vu when he saw not one, but four, five, _six_ , zombies enter the store. What next, organized zombie troops? Zombie crime lords?

The first infected fell victim to Tetsu's well aimed bullets to the head. The second to Daiki's—and who would have thought that all those painful hours of just reloading your gun over and over again that Wakamatsu-san had put all of his trainees through would finally pay off.

From the corner of his eye, Daiki saw Tetsu run up the stairs and disappear into the shadows of the windowless territory of the second floor, confusing the two bastards that followed him.

But Jesus could those thing run, Daiki thought irritated as his fist met an ugly slimy face of the zombie to his left. It stumbled, momentarily stunned. Daiki kicked the one to his right in the stomach and when it keened over, smashed its face against his knee. He cursed when the remains slid down his jeans in a trail of grey, sticky goo, but had no time to mourn when its injured friend had already recovered from the broken nose.

Enraged, the creature took a moment to shriek, shaking all over. But that moment was enough for Daiki to grab it by the long hair. Wincing at the feel, he wrapped the mane around his hand to get a good grip. And with one forceful tug, he shattered the zombie's head against the sharp angular edge of the cash register counter.

The brains in his palm felt abso-fucking-lutely disgusting.

Somewhere above, an explosion went off. Loud and thundering, it seemed to shake the entire second floor. Those nail bombs of Tetsu's were _awesome_ , Daiki thought, grinning madly as he limped towards the stairs. _Towards Tetsu._

In retrospect, he was a fool.

He  became aware of  the hand right before it touched his shoulder. Felt the sickly foul breath on his neck. But was too late to do anything about it.

Ah, so there were more, Daiki thought belatedly as his back collided with the wall. Dizzy from the impact, he blindly tried to rise up and sonovabitch, he must have cracked a rib when the bastard had thrown him. Daiki felt a ridiculous urge to laugh except just breathing hurt.

To die with his hand gun dropped to the floor, just that out of reach, _God fucking dammit_.

In all his missions, Daiki had never imagined his death. There were nightmares, of course, screams swallowed by the night, screams he would never admit to. And Tetsu's hands handing him a hot mug of some strange concoction that would eventually calm him down. Or maybe it was just tea.

But to actually imagine dying?

That meant fear. And fear meant death.

Growling, spitting and tripping over its own mangled legs, the zombie advanced.

It looked at Daiki, and seemed to be almost... gloating. As if it hated Daiki, as if it was savouring this moment of Daiki's fall, as if it was _human._

Frantically, Daiki's hand roamed the floor for something, anything.

Nothing.

Not a piece of broken glass, not a rock, not even a goddamn book to chunk in the bloody eye.

A pencil.

Daiki really, really wanted to laugh as he gripped the thin wooden stick in his right hand.

To die or not to die wasn't even a question.

He grabbed the zombie by the collar of its dirty tattered shirt and wrestled himself up.

And with all of the force still left in him, Daiki stuck the bright yellow pen right in the creature's carotid and the gurgling sound of it chocking did not register. He pushed, and pushed, harder, and harder. The nails of the creature clawed at his arms, ripping the black leather of his jacket, and Daiki didn't care because this fucker. Was not. Dying.

It was still panting, wheezing, howling through the pen lodged in its throat. And in its eyes, there was no fear, no hatred. Nothing beyond the all consuming mindless _hunger._

Putting both hands on the ugly greasy head, Daiki twisted it, and twisted. And it wasn't enough. Pushing the lifeless body away from him, he shoved it hard against one of the fallen bookshelves.

A satisfying crack of spinal cord breaking, and it felt as if it was Daiki's. He tried to lean on the wall, but missed and fell on the floor in a listless heap.

“Aomine-kun?” he heard an eternity later, when the deafening ringing in his ears had subsided. Slowly, clumsily, Daiki sat up, and grinned lopsidedly.

“You have guts in your hair,” he told Tetsu through the shallow breaths that sounded painful even to his own ears. “What a mess, huh?” he tried again, but chocked on a cough that ended in a pathetic wheeze.

Tetsu opened his mouth to say something, then closed it. Opened again. “You look like you almost died,” he said.

And didn't that hit too close to home. Fuck, maybe Satsuki had a point. Finally, the laughter bubbled free, and it sounded a bit hysterical, and it hurt a lot but Daiki just kept laughing, and coughing, and wheezing. To think that all he had wanted this morning was to surprise Tetsu, to erase that worried look on his face, to—

“—shit, Tetsu, I want to kiss you. I really, really want to—”

Except then Tetsu was kissing Daiki.

\- - -

“ _..._ _frequent instances of zombie activity have been reported near the shores of Fukui. Entering the_ _city and the_ _surrounding area is forbidden_ _until_ _official_ _forces have been dispatched to clear it from the infected. A_ _ny_ _unauthorised civilians_ _found in the area_ _will be..._ ”

Tetsu turned the volume of the radio down, until the reporter's voice was but a low buzz in the background. He seemed calm as he took out his thick notebook to scribble down the new information, made red circles on a tattered map.

Their truck whirred silently forward, leaving the crumbled city behind. Daiki leaned back in the driver's seat, relaxing. “So what do you say, eh, Tetsu? We gonna hit the highway before we hit the labs?”

Tetsu took his time putting the notebook away, but his focused attention afterwards was worth it. “Imayoshi-san's lecture is already looking quite long.”

Daiki leered. “That wasn't a no.”

“And it has been quire a while since I last enjoyed an actual shower. With hot water,” Tetsu said rather wistfully.

“Still not a no.”

“Kagami-kun is already on his way there with Himuro-kun.”

“Are you doing this on purpose?” Daiki asked, suspicious. “Besides, when has a late start ever stopped us from evening the score?”

“You mean, when has your inability to follow the plan ever killed the plan?” Daiki was about to protest, but Tetsu's smile stopped him in his tracks. “No, Aomine-kun,” he said, “it wasn't a no.”

_The end._

 


End file.
